Digital Foundry Article: The Future of Anti-Aliasing (56K Run for cover!)

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digital-foundry-future-of-anti-aliasing

My personal favorites in this article are PS3 MLAA, Xbox 360/PC GPU MLAA, and FXAA3 (Sharp)

Pics for discussion: GPU MLAA Vs. No AA

Funny how adding MLAA to Castlevania easily puts it on par with God of War 3... Now about that framerate...

from a dev point of view anti-aliasing could be a big deal but from consumer point of view, i don't care because you don't notice things like that when the game is in motion.

Yes MLAA looks the best to me, much sharper as well.

from a dev point of view anti-aliasing could be a big deal but from consumer point of view, i don't care because you don't notice things like that when the game is in motion.

Chris_Williams

from a dev point of view anti-aliasing could be a big deal but from consumer point of view, i don't care because you don't notice things like that when the game is in motion.

Chris_Williams

:o What if it's a stealth game?

The only set that I really noticed a difference in was the third one. Have to agree with the previous poster, the average consumer probably won't notice, either.

from a dev point of view anti-aliasing could be a big deal but from consumer point of view, i don't care because you don't notice things like that when the game is in motion.

Chris_Williams

The only set that I really noticed a difference in was the third one. Have to agree with the previous poster, the average consumer probably won't notice, either.

svetzenlether

The only set that I really noticed a difference in was the third one. Have to agree with the previous poster, the average consumer probably won't notice, either.

svetzenlether

The only set that I really noticed a difference in was the third one. Have to agree with the previous poster, the average consumer probably won't notice, either.

svetzenlether

There are a few games on the PC where I would like to use MLAA, as the games have no AA option, or the games AA does not work at all in Dead Space 2 case. The other being NFS hot pursuit 2010.

[QUOTE="svetzenlether"]

The only set that I really noticed a difference in was the third one. Have to agree with the previous poster, the average consumer probably won't notice, either.

mitu123

No it means the average consumer is probably unaware of the existence of Anti-Aliasing.

[QUOTE="svetzenlether"]

The only set that I really noticed a difference in was the third one. Have to agree with the previous poster, the average consumer probably won't notice, either.

millerlight89

Okay, I looked again, and noticed a bit from the first set, still not on the second, though. Seriously, I can't see me noticing this during gameplay.

How did they get MLAA in Castlevania?

How did they get MLAA in Castlevania?

Adamantium4k2

They can apply it on top of existing footage they already had, the game it self does not have any type of AA.

[QUOTE="millerlight89"][QUOTE="svetzenlether"]

The only set that I really noticed a difference in was the third one. Have to agree with the previous poster, the average consumer probably won't notice, either.

svetzenlether

Okay, I looked again, and noticed a bit from the first set, still not on the second, though. Seriously, I can't see me noticing this during gameplay.

Not a huge fan of MLAA. It's not really a substitute for actual AA. False edges can lead to a good deal of blurring, it's a post processing affect and therefore adds a tiny amount of display lag, and it doesn't always detect edges.

A good example of what MLAA actually does:

In some cases, the MLAA does a pretty good job with the edges, in other areas, it misses the edges entirely. You can also see how the blurring filter dulls some of the surrounding colors. MLAA isn't so much a solution to 'jaggies' as it is a trade off. You lose some jagged edges at the cost of fidelity.

AA is something that I hope is fixed in next gen consoles. LA Noire for instance can range from amazing me graphically to making my eyes bleed.

[QUOTE="mitu123"][QUOTE="svetzenlether"]

The only set that I really noticed a difference in was the third one. Have to agree with the previous poster, the average consumer probably won't notice, either.

stvee101

No it means the average consumer is probably unaware of the existence of Anti-Aliasing.

[QUOTE="mitu123"][QUOTE="svetzenlether"]

The only set that I really noticed a difference in was the third one. Have to agree with the previous poster, the average consumer probably won't notice, either.

stvee101

No it means the average consumer is probably unaware of the existence of Anti-Aliasing.

Unaware or not he will still notice it. The average consumer may not know how it's called or what is causing it but he does notice a difference between a lot of jaggies and one with great AA.

MLAA is fine and it was a God sent for the PS3. People are just trying to over exaggerate that it Blurs the image like hell when it obvious looks fine and doesnt even blur as much as Crytek's AA method.

The console version of FXAA does not look that great, at least in those screens it didnt. FXAA quality looks really good though, but I think thats the PC version. Still its better than no AA, or quincunx.

from a dev point of view anti-aliasing could be a big deal but from consumer point of view, i don't care because you don't notice things like that when the game is in motion.

Chris_Williams

from a dev point of view anti-aliasing could be a big deal but from consumer point of view, i don't care because you don't notice things like that when the game is in motion.

Chris_Williams

lol what??? It is worse when you move bc the jaggies move.

[QUOTE="stvee101"]

[QUOTE="mitu123"] Wouldn't that mean the average consumer is blind?>.>edidili

No it means the average consumer is probably unaware of the existence of Anti-Aliasing.

Unaware or not he will still notice it. The average consumer may not know how it's called or what is causing it but he does notice a difference between a lot of jaggies and one with great AA.

I really doubt it.

Especially with the examples the TC provided.

From my experience,while we in SW obsess over minor differences in image-quality,the average consumer is sitting 5-10 feet away from the TV screen and racking up kills in BLops in sub-HD with 0xAA and is completely oblivious to it .

The console version of FXAA does not look that great, at least in those screens it didnt. FXAA quality looks really good though, but I think thats the PC version. Still its better than no AA, or quincunx.

GTSaiyanjin2

FXAA3 sharp settings were not shown in the pictures. But it was shown in the videos.

Here's FXAA3 Sharp.

FXAA3 Default

FXAA3. Best Quality/Performance ratio by far.

I don't think people really understand just how expensive SPU-MLAA is... There are things that the SPUs can and should be used for, but MLAA causes too much of a performance hit for them to be used(10% of the processing time across 5 SPUs means that doing things like SPU Skinning, which can have a 10-15% performance INCREASE, becomes more and more difficult).

Meanwhile, FXAA3 is practically free(less than 5% performance hit) and what amounts to basically 1-1.5 FPS and it doesn't degrade nearly as much as MLAA in moving sequences.

MLAA is the best option if you are absolutely obsessed with image quality, but I think as far as "real-time solutions" go, FXAA3 is the winner.

And if you want the "best image quality" then FSSFXAA is the best option(Fractional Super Sampled FXAA). Do a Fractional Super Sample(4/3 resolution), apply FXAA3, then downsample. Better image quality than MLAA. Granted, not really feasible on the consoles, but still...

[QUOTE="edidili"]

[QUOTE="stvee101"]

No it means the average consumer is probably unaware of the existence of Anti-Aliasing.

stvee101

Unaware or not he will still notice it. The average consumer may not know how it's called or what is causing it but he does notice a difference between a lot of jaggies and one with great AA.

I really doubt it.

Especially with the examples the TC provided.

From my experience,while we in SW obsess over minor differences in image-quality,the average consumer is sitting 5-10 feet away from the TV screen and racking up kills in BLops in sub-HD with 0xAA and is completely oblivious to it .

Well I used to play on nes back in the days and the crappy graphics didn't really bother me. That doesn't mean that if I had a PS3 back then I wouldn't tell the difference. I just didn't know better. The same as with this case. Plenty don't give much crap about it because they haven't seen better but they still could tell the difference between jaggies everywhere and a crisp image with straight lines.

from a dev point of view anti-aliasing could be a big deal but from consumer point of view, i don't care because you don't notice things like that when the game is in motion.

Chris_Williams

[QUOTE="stvee101"]

[QUOTE="edidili"]

Unaware or not he will still notice it. The average consumer may not know how it's called or what is causing it but he does notice a difference between a lot of jaggies and one with great AA.

edidili

I really doubt it.

Especially with the examples the TC provided.

From my experience,while we in SW obsess over minor differences in image-quality,the average consumer is sitting 5-10 feet away from the TV screen and racking up kills in BLops in sub-HD with 0xAA and is completely oblivious to it .

Well I used to play on nes back in the days and the crappy graphics didn't really bother me. That doesn't mean that if I had a PS3 back then I wouldn't tell the difference. I just didn't know better. The same as with this case. Plenty don't give much crap about it because they haven't seen better but they still could tell the difference between jaggies everywhere and a crisp image with straight lines.

During the NES days... The "graphics kings" were in the arcades. It was really apparent when comparing ports...

[QUOTE="Chris_Williams"]

from a dev point of view anti-aliasing could be a big deal but from consumer point of view, i don't care because you don't notice things like that when the game is in motion.

silversix_

There are a few games on the PC where I would like to use MLAA, as the games have no AA option, or the games AA does not work at all in Dead Space 2 case. The other being NFS hot pursuit 2010.

GTSaiyanjin2

Every PC game has MLAA.

[QUOTE="GTSaiyanjin2"]

There are a few games on the PC where I would like to use MLAA, as the games have no AA option, or the games AA does not work at all in Dead Space 2 case. The other being NFS hot pursuit 2010.

Jebus213

Every PC game has MLAA.

With ATI/AMD cards you mean ? or is there another way to activate it.

It's odd saying there's a future for AA. I mean, will they have future?; all those substitute methods when they ditch the PS3 and 360 for hardware in wich MSAA is not a resource hog?

[QUOTE="Jebus213"]

[QUOTE="GTSaiyanjin2"]

There are a few games on the PC where I would like to use MLAA, as the games have no AA option, or the games AA does not work at all in Dead Space 2 case. The other being NFS hot pursuit 2010.

GTSaiyanjin2

Every PC game has MLAA.

With ATI/AMD cards you mean ? or is there another way to activate it.

Yes, with ATI/AMD cards. You can enable it in the control panel and it will work in just about any game. I think Nvidia came out with something called SRAA? Idk, haven't payed attention to them in awhile.

[QUOTE="GTSaiyanjin2"]

There are a few games on the PC where I would like to use MLAA, as the games have no AA option, or the games AA does not work at all in Dead Space 2 case. The other being NFS hot pursuit 2010.

Jebus213

Every PC game has MLAA.

That particular MLAA method is not good...

FXAA quality was the best looking imo, but again that was pc hardware for that. Overall though i still prefer msaa, its sharper, applies less blur, and doesnt mess with textures except make the edges of color changes sharper.

It's odd saying there's a future for AA. I mean, will they have future?; all those substitute methods when they ditch the PS3 and 360 for hardware in wich MSAA is not a resource hog?

Masculus

... MSAA will always be a resource hog. Particularly with the rising popularity of Deferred Shading. You have 5 Render Targets at 1280x720, and the result is basically 18MB of RAM just for the G-Buffer(RGBA color data format, with 4 bytes per pixel). Then, for MSAA, every stage of sampling multiplies that. 2xMSAA = 36MB. 4xMSAA=72MB. 8xMSAA = 144MB. 16xMSAA = 288MB. If you do 1920x1080, it just gets absurd, with 16xMSAA taking 663.5MB(if you have ever wondered why certain PC games get destroyed by MSAA, this is why... especially if you play at 1920x1080 or 2560x1600). Granted, there are ways to work it down and reduce the RAM footprint, but every time you do that you reduce the effectiveness of the MSAA.

Something like a very high quality FXAA with a 4/3 super sample and the highest quality algorithm possible can achieve results comparable to 16xMSAA using just a 55MB G-Buffer with a 1080p output(game rendering natively at a higher res like 2217x1247 for the fractional super sample) and a fraction of the processing time.

MSAA doesn't play well with Deferred Shading.

from a dev point of view anti-aliasing could be a big deal but from consumer point of view, i don't care because you don't notice things like that when the game is in motion.

Chris_Williams

[QUOTE="Masculus"]

It's odd saying there's a future for AA. I mean, will they have future?; all those substitute methods when they ditch the PS3 and 360 for hardware in wich MSAA is not a resource hog?

KingsMessenger

... MSAA will always be a resource hog. Particularly with the rising popularity of Deferred Shading. You have 5 Render Targets at 1280x720, and the result is basically 18MB of RAM just for the G-Buffer(RGBA color data format, with 4 bytes per pixel). Then, for MSAA, every stage of sampling multiplies that. 2xMSAA = 36MB. 4xMSAA=72MB. 8xMSAA = 144MB. 16xMSAA = 288MB. If you do 1920x1080, it just gets absurd, with 16xMSAA taking 663.5MB(if you have ever wondered why certain PC games get destroyed by MSAA, this is why... especially if you play at 1920x1080 or 2560x1600). Granted, there are ways to work it down and reduce the RAM footprint, but every time you do that you reduce the effectiveness of the MSAA.

Something like a very high quality FXAA with a 4/3 super sample and the highest quality algorithm possible can achieve results comparable to 16xMSAA using just a 55MB G-Buffer with a 1080p output(game rendering natively at a higher res like 2217x1247 for the fractional super sample) and a fraction of the processing time.

MSAA doesn't play well with Deferred Shading.

I see. I wondered that since a long time now I don't even see a marginal drop in peformance with MSAA in my PC. As for the incompatibility with MSAA, wasn't it an issue with DX9? I just hope those are available soon.

Well whatever way they choose to go with for the next consoles, it cant happen soon enough for me!

I am at the moment playing Red Dead Redemption on the PS3 on a 60" Plasma and the jaggies are atrocious, it is so bad that it is detrimentally affecting the play experience for me. I want to enjoy the game but I am sitting there trying to distiguish things from the background, which is nigh on impossible, makes my eyes bleed. I guess that is why Rockstar put the little x marks on the mini map so you could actually tell where dead bodies are ... nine times out of ten you couldnt see them by yourself.

At this rate I dont know that I can even be bothered trying to finish it. Maybe my time would be better spent praying for Rockstar to pull their heads out of their ass and release the game on PC so it can be enjoyed properly.

I see. I wondered that since a long time now I don't even see a marginal drop in peformance with MSAA in my PC. As for the incompatibility with MSAA, wasn't it an issue with DX9? I just hope those are available soon.

Masculus

The issue with it extends beyond just DX9, simply because of the RAM. DX11 fixes the problem with the sampling that basically made MSAA useless, but the RAM issue still exists.

And there is no way that you aren't have a performance drop with MSAA... If you are using 8xMSAA or 16xMSAA, you WILL have a significant performance hit, and for games that use Deferred Shading it will be even worse. A lot of games that use Deferred Shading don't even enable MSAA because of the RAM issues that it can cause.

[QUOTE="KingsMessenger"]

[QUOTE="Masculus"]

It's odd saying there's a future for AA. I mean, will they have future?; all those substitute methods when they ditch the PS3 and 360 for hardware in wich MSAA is not a resource hog?

Masculus

... MSAA will always be a resource hog. Particularly with the rising popularity of Deferred Shading. You have 5 Render Targets at 1280x720, and the result is basically 18MB of RAM just for the G-Buffer(RGBA color data format, with 4 bytes per pixel). Then, for MSAA, every stage of sampling multiplies that. 2xMSAA = 36MB. 4xMSAA=72MB. 8xMSAA = 144MB. 16xMSAA = 288MB. If you do 1920x1080, it just gets absurd, with 16xMSAA taking 663.5MB(if you have ever wondered why certain PC games get destroyed by MSAA, this is why... especially if you play at 1920x1080 or 2560x1600). Granted, there are ways to work it down and reduce the RAM footprint, but every time you do that you reduce the effectiveness of the MSAA.

Something like a very high quality FXAA with a 4/3 super sample and the highest quality algorithm possible can achieve results comparable to 16xMSAA using just a 55MB G-Buffer with a 1080p output(game rendering natively at a higher res like 2217x1247 for the fractional super sample) and a fraction of the processing time.

MSAA doesn't play well with Deferred Shading.

I see. I wondered that since a long time now I don't even see a marginal drop in peformance with MSAA in my PC. As for the incompatibility with MSAA, wasn't it an issue with DX9? I just hope those are available soon.

Just as an example of what Deferred Shading combined with MSAA can cause:

Even with just 2xMSAA it is a 20 FPS hit. And the game doesn't even allow you to enable it when Dynamic Lighting is enabled(the time when Deferred Shading is being used), so you have to force it through your drivers... If you try to go any higher than that, it will literally bring any system down. The only way to get out of it is basically to have a SLI setup with 2-3 GPUs an what amounts to like 3GB of VRAM. A standard single card setup will be destroyed by MSAA in a game that uses Deferred Shading.

Even with just 2xMSAA it is a 20 FPS hit. And the game doesn't even allow you to enable it when Dynamic Lighting is enabled(the time when Deferred Shading is being used), so you have to force it through your drivers... If you try to go any higher than that, it will literally bring any system down. The only way to get out of it is basically to have a SLI setup with 2-3 GPUs an what amounts to like 3GB of VRAM. A standard single card setup will be destroyed by MSAA in a game that uses Deferred Shading.

KingsMessenger

Which Stalker game is that? I didn't know the x-ray engine used deferred shading.

[QUOTE="KingsMessenger"]

Even with just 2xMSAA it is a 20 FPS hit. And the game doesn't even allow you to enable it when Dynamic Lighting is enabled(the time when Deferred Shading is being used), so you have to force it through your drivers... If you try to go any higher than that, it will literally bring any system down. The only way to get out of it is basically to have a SLI setup with 2-3 GPUs an what amounts to like 3GB of VRAM. A standard single card setup will be destroyed by MSAA in a game that uses Deferred Shading.

29121994

Which Stalker game is that? I didn't know the x-ray engine used deferred shading.